Stoicism is a philosophy that boosts the soul and invigorates the human spirit. It enables men to face the ordeals of daily existence, the challenges the world constantly presents and life’s own faults and quirks with determination and fortitude. Its most important lesson is the truth that much of life’s misery is self-inflicted. And at the core of the principle is the belief that the four fundamental qualities of courage, justice, wisdom, and self-control are the seedbed of human success and affluence, and that all of your pains and sufferings arise from your insight and understanding of events, rather than the events per se.
Stoicism’s charm and application is mirrored in the variety of its creators and early advocates: Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor and military leader; Seneca, an illustrious dramatist; Epictetus, a former slave who unchained and remade himself into a top-flight lecturer; Musonius Rufus, a successful merchant; and Cleanthes, a former boxer who put himself through school by working as a water carrier.
In The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living, authors Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman expose Stoicism’s enduring intelligence in steering the contemporary languages of recurrent human difficulties: how to love and work, how to repress and overcome anger, greed, envy, and the rest of your worst flaws, how not to let success and power bind you, how to find affection and how to be alive in the unsettling knowledge that you are mortal. The book brings classic wisdom to a new generation. It provides a daily dose of concise, compelling passages, as well as historical vignettes and a stimulating review to help you confront any issue or achieve your goals. Among the 366 meditations and timeless insights, here are my personal choices:
• Control and choice is yours. The single most important practice in Stoicism is differentiating between what you can change and what you can’t, what you have influence over and what you do not. A flight is delayed because of bad weather — no amount of yelling or cursing at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller, fairer, or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make someone be fond of you. Those who are in recovery programs practice the Serenity Prayer: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Drug addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices they have made or the hurt they have caused. But they can change the future through the power they have in the present moment.
• Pleasure can become punishment. Self-control is a difficult thing, no question, so a popular trick from dieting might be helpful. Some diets allow a “cheat day” — one day per week in which dieters can eat anything and everything they want. Indeed, you’re encouraged to write a list during the week of all the foods you craved so you can enjoy them all at once as a treat; the thinking is that if you’re eating healthy six out of seven days, you’re still ahead. At first, this sounds like a dream, but anyone who has actually done this knows the truth: when you eat yourself sick on cheat day, you hate yourself afterward. Soon enough, you’re willingly abstaining from cheating at all. It’s important to connect the so-called temptation with its actual effects. Once you understand that indulging might actually be worse than resisting, the urge begins to lose its appeal. In this way, self-control becomes the real pleasure, and the temptation becomes the regret.
• Wealth and freedom are free. There are two ways to be wealthy: to get everything you want or to want everything you have. The same goes for freedom. If you scrape and fight and struggle for more, you will never be free. If you could find and focus on the pockets of freedom you already have, well, then, you’d be free right here, right now. Epictetus said, “Freedom isn’t secured by filling up on your heart’s desire but by removing your desire.”
• If you want to learn, be humble. The reality is that you’re guilty of thinking you know it all, and you’d learn more if you could set that attitude aside. As smart or successful as you may be, there is always someone who is smarter, more successful and wiser than you. Emerson put it well: “Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.” If you want to learn, if you want to improve your life, seeking out teachers, philosophers, and great books is a good start. But this approach will only be effective if you’re humble and ready to let go of opinions you already have. “Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for a person to begin to learn what he thinks he already knows,” Epictetus advised.
• Work is therapy. You know that feeling you get when you haven’t been to the gym in a few days? You feel doughy, irritable, claustrophobic, and uncertain. Others get a similar feeling when they’ve been on vacation for too long or right after they first retire. The mind and the body are there to be used — they begin to turn on themselves when not put to some productive end. It’s sad to think that this kind of frustration is an everyday reality for a lot of people. They leave so much of their potential unfulfilled because they have jobs where they don’t really do much or because they have too much time on their hands. Worse is when you try to push these feelings away by buying things, going out, fighting, creating drama — indulging in the empty calories of existence instead of finding real nourishment. The solution is simple and, thankfully, always right at hand. Get out there and work. Seneca declared, “Work nourishes noble minds.”
• Insanity is trying the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result. You tell yourself: “Today, I won’t get angry”; “Today, I won’t gorge myself.” But you don’t actually do anything differently. You try the same routine and hope it will work this time. Hope is not a strategy. Failure is a part of life you have little choice over. Learning from failure, on the other hand, is optional. You have to choose to learn. You must consciously opt to do things differently — to tweak and change until you actually get the result you’re after. But that’s hard. Sticking with the same unsuccessful pattern is easy. It doesn’t take any thought or any additional effort, which is probably why most people do it.
• Humanity is capable of doing evil, not only actively but passively. History abounds with evidence to support this claim. In some of the most shameful moments — from slavery to segregation to the murder of an opposition leader — guilt wasn’t limited to perpetrators but to ordinary citizens, who, for a multitude of reasons, declined to get involved. It’s that old line: all evil needs to prevail is for good men to do nothing. It’s not enough to just not do evil. You must also be a force for good in the world, as best you can. Marcus Aurelius spoke, “Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.”
• Your career is not a life sentence. Every few years, a sad spectacle is played out in the news. An old millionaire, still lord of his business empire, is taken to court. Shareholders and family members go to court to argue that he is no longer mentally competent to make decisions — that the patriarch is not fit to run his own company and legal affairs. Because this powerful person refused to ever relinquish control or develop a succession plan, he is subjected to one of life’s worst humiliations; the public exposure of his most private vulnerabilities. You must not get so wrapped up in your work that you think you’re immune from the reality of aging and life. Don’t be the person who can never let go. Don’t pursue work until you’re eventually carted off in a coffin. Take pride in your work. But work is not all there is.
• Silence is strength. Recall the last time you said something that came back to bite you? Why did you say it? Chances are you didn’t need to, but you thought doing so would make you look smart or cool or part of the group. Robert Greene wrote, “The more you say, the more likely you are to blow past opportunities, ignore feedback, and cause yourself suffering.” The inexperienced and fearful talk to reassure themselves. The ability to listen — to deliberately keep out of the conversation and subsist without its validity — is rare. Silence is a way to build power and self-sufficiency.
• Haters often harbor secret attractions to those they so publicly hate. It’s a sad irony. When someone has a strong opinion about something, it usually says more about that person than whatever or whomever the opinion happens to be about. For this reason, the Stoic does two things when encountering hatred or ill opinion in others. He asks: Is this opinion inside my control? If there is a chance for influence or change, he takes it. But if there isn’t, he accepts this person as he is — and never hates a hater. Your job is tough enough already. You don’t have time to think about what other people are thinking, even if it’s about you.
• Age is just a number. Rich people and health nuts spend a fortune on moving their expiration dates from 75 years to hopefully forever. The number of years you manage to eke out doesn’t matter, only what those years are composed of. Seneca put it best when he said, “Life is long if you know how to use it.” Sadly, most people don’t — they waste the life they’ve been given. Only when it is too late do they try to compensate for that waste by vainly hoping to put more time on the clock. Use today. Use every day. Make yourself satisfied with what you have been given.
Whether you are cubicle slave or the president of your own company, you need to find your center. Be calm, focus, find your true joy and the good life you deserve.
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